


Aay'han

by Fightslikeagirl



Series: Aay'han and Other Stories of the Outer Rim [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28499196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fightslikeagirl/pseuds/Fightslikeagirl
Summary: Grogu reflects on the men who raised him at the end of his father's long, eventful life.I made myself sad with this and now everyone else gets to suffer with me. Mandalorians apparently adopt children like most people pick up milk at a grocery store, and I like the idea of Boba and Din being totally susceptible to that impulse.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Boba Fett
Series: Aay'han and Other Stories of the Outer Rim [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2130117
Comments: 17
Kudos: 261





	Aay'han

**Author's Note:**

> aay'han - bittersweet moment of mourning and joy  
> adenn- merciless  
> buir-parent  
> Ad’ika-kid/child  
> ade-children  
> https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mando%27a/Legends#cite_note-Mando.27a-6

Grogu sat on a low cushion beside a bed, meditating. He had little else to be doing. His buir, his father, was dying. Din Djarin was an old man, and decades of bounty hunting, followed by the war to reclaim Mandalore, had finally caught up to him. Grogu himself was the equivalent of young adult human now. He was neither Jedi nor Mandalorian but something in between. Another of his buir’s foundling children had taken over the darksaber and had become ruler as Din’s health faded. Grogu had no interest in that path, and his sister, named Fennec after his aunt, was better suited. The planet thrived under her rule, and she was more than capable of battling to defend her title.

Din’s breaths were becoming slower and more labored. Grogu reached over and grasped Din’s hand with his own green one.

He had lived through many of these goodbyes. His species was long-lived, and the humans who had raised him and loved him were not. The first had been his Aunt Fennec, who had died in a firefight on Tatooine the way she had always wanted to go out. Then his other buir, Boba, had succumbed to the genetic issues that always plagued clones later in life. The last time they had talked, they had been watching the sunset from the top of the old palace on Tatooine.

_“Grogu…watch out for your father. Don’t let him bury himself in work when I’m gone.” Boba had been thin near the end. He had looked tired. He had transformed Tatooine and the Hutt empire into something like a functioning planetary government with what passed for a democracy. He and Din had migrated between their respective empires, but even so they accumulated over twenty foundlings they raised as their own. Grogu had been the first and oldest, but the Mandalorian drive to adopt children had not kept him an only child for long. He had returned from his Jedi training to Fennec, then Cara (named for another aunt), Adenn, and many others of every species imaginable. His fathers had loved every one of them. Raised them, loved them, and taught them to make their way in a harsh galaxy. Some were Mandalorian, others never really took to the creed, but it never mattered to their buirs._

_“I won’t, Buir. I won’t let him work himself into the ground and I’ll watch out for the ade.”_

_Boba had smiled at him. “Ad’ika. I am so proud of you. You’ll make your mark on the universe and no one will ever forget it. I’m only sorry you’ll have so many of these goodbyes over your life.”_

_Grogu looked out across the sand. “I’m not. The aay’han…they hurt. But Master Luke taught me that the people we lose are always with us through the force. I’ll never be truly alone.”_

_Boba, never a particularly demonstrative man, had surprised him by pulling him close into his side for a hug._

_Boba had passed in his sleep that night. Din had not removed his helmet around anyone else for weeks. Grogu and Fennec had taken turns coaxing him to eat and sleep, resorting to drugging him on a few occasions. Boba’s armor had gone to Adenn, a human boy Boba had freed from a slave market on some backwater moon. None of the other children had argued. Adenn was to Boba as Grogu was to Din. Not the favorites, per se, but the sons who most closely followed their fathers._

_It had been fifteen years. Din had never shown any interest in anyone else._

Din’s breaths were rattling more now. Grogu knew that sound. There was a commotion outside, but he didn't look up. There were guards outside. Anyone opening the door would be a sibling or close friend, not a threat. 

The door opened and Fennec came in, boots silent on the rugs. She was a tall, fierce Twi’lek who, while she didn't resemble Fennec Shand, certainly fought like her namesake. Her history was not something anyone discussed, and Grogu never asked. She was simply part of the family, and she was Mandalorian now, helmet held under her arm. She smelled of hyperspace. She set her helmet down beside their father's on a shelf and knelt down. 

“Not long now,” he murmured. 

She nodded. “I’m glad I made it.”

“I sent the message out to everyone, but I don’t know who received it." 

Fennec brushed their father’s grey hair out of his face. “They know he loved them. And he knows they love him. No matter where we are in the galaxy, that doesn’t change. Never has, never will.”

“Of course.”

“There are many on Mandalore who want to know why he wasn’t brought there. I don’t know how to explain that he loved the Mandalorian people, not the planet. Tatooine was always his home. He belonged with Boba. And with you.” She glanced at Grogu and smiled.

He elbowed her gently. They had squabbled as children, but with age came truce, then true fondness. “With all of us.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Of course. But he fought half the empire to save you as a child. That’s a different bond. He loved all of us, you were just…different.”

Grogu didn't argue, he just leaned against his sister as they watched Din’s breaths slow to only a few a minute, then stop. Grogu closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Din Djarin and Boba Fett were not Jedi and would not become force ghosts. Not like Master Yoda or Master Luke. But Grogu had felt Boba’s presence with him for over a decade, and he could feel Din’s now.

Din’s last words to Grogu, said before he had lost consciousness a few hours before, had been simple.

“I love you, Ad’ika.”


End file.
